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An illegal ‘by any other name’

Liberals love to rename things, and as the immigration debate intensifies the left is assisting Barack Obama in his battle to grant amnesty to illegals by portraying the word “illegal” as offensive. If all goes according to plan, if and when the word “illegal” accompanies the word “immigrant,” the hope is that the expression will get the same reaction as the “N” word.

Up on Capitol Hill, the consistently über-liberal and controversial John Conyers Jr. is the politician putting himself in charge of policing the word “illegal.” Congressman Conyers is the 84-year-old 48-year Michigan congressman whom the Detroit News aptly coined “part showman, part junkyard dog, part evangelist.”

At the opening hearing of the new Congress, on the topic of immigration, Conyers, the second-longest-serving member of the House of Representatives and former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, cautioned those in attendance against calling illegal immigrants “illegal immigrants.”

In an attempt to rehabilitate lawlessness by renaming it, and speaking on behalf of the amnesty-minded, John said “I hope no one uses the term illegal immigrants here today. Our citizens are not – the people in this country are not illegal. They are out of status. They are new Americans that are immigrants.”

As a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, John Conyers Jr. is a champion for those he perceives as the underdog. Conyers pushed for reparations for the descendants of slaves, prematurely called for Nixon’s impeachment over the Vietnam War, and censured Bush and Cheney for justifying the Iraqi invasion.

With a mindset that liberal, it would stand to reason that John would concur with immigrant-rights supporters who abhor the words “illegal” and “alien” because of the negative connotations associated with being exactly that – “illegal” and an “alien.”

According to John Conyers, instead of being labeled border-crashing intruders, individuals who unlawfully infiltrate a sovereign nation should be referred to with the usual type of gobbledygook liberals are known for. The left’s tried-and-true strategy is to come up with words that romanticize wrongdoing in order to legitimize what Americans largely reject.

Renaming things and declaring certain words offensive is a ploy that has been wildly successful for liberals like John Conyers. Murdering the unborn is called “choice,” stealing from hardworking Americans is “raising revenue,” and shooting a bullet through the heart of the Second Amendment is “school safety.”

If remediating the reputation of illegal immigrants is the goal, the Michigan congressman could ease America into it if he just begins referring to things like kidnapping as “babysitting” and car theft as “automobile reallocation.”

John Conyers is proving to be such a pro at agitating the status quo that during his wife Monica’s 2010 trial and subsequent conviction it must have been very difficult for the congressman to resist asking the judge to refer to bribery and conspiracy as something other than bribery and conspiracy. Mrs. Conyers, the former president of the Detroit City Council, is now serving a 37-month sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to – you guessed it – bribery and conspiracy.

Still, liberals like John Conyers have so skillfully managed to warp Americans’ thinking that otherwise perfectly sane people are actually convinced that 150 million guns can be tracked and registered, but the 11 million illegal aliens dwelling among us should be pardoned because they would be impossible to find.

In our public schools, what Conyers calls “new American” or “out of status” children are allowed to occupy seats unimpeded, but an American child playing with a toy gun on a school bus is expelled, or worse yet, thrown into a juvenile detention center.

In the end, as Barack Obama prepares to circumvent the law by granting amnesty to 11 million intruders, John Conyers is right there with him attempting to make what is illegitimate legitimate by calling illegal immigrants something other than what they are. And not only is Conyers making it more criminal to oppose illegal immigration than it is to be an illegal immigrant, he’s also attempting to intimidate the Judiciary Committee into following suit.

Clearly, with the help of John Conyers, the groundwork is being laid to deal with impudent politicians who insist on using the “i” word, i.e. “illegal immigrant.” The left can then demand a public apology and issue a demand for the wrongdoer to step down, further convincing Americans to avoid voicing opposition to liberals’ nakedly self-serving proposals